


The One Where He Falls In Love With Death

by justbygrace



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, dark themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-18 23:57:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3588732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justbygrace/pseuds/justbygrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based vaguely on a tumblr post I don't know how to link</p>
            </blockquote>





	The One Where He Falls In Love With Death

The first time he sees her he is eleven years old and he is standing on the sidewalk beside a car whose rolling flames mock the pouring rain. The sirens are in the distance, but then she is there and he knows that it is too late. He's never seen her before, but he's heard, of course, the stories whispered by pre-adolescents desperately pretending they are grown enough not to be scared of the words they are speaking and the way she's portrayed on the telly by producers who care more about ratings than pissing off the oldest being in or out of the universe. His first thought is that her presence means that he is now utterly alone and the second is that she is gorgeous - he is, after all, only eleven. She looks at him kindly, running her fingers lightly over his tousled hair, the marks from the flying glass, and the jagged cut on his arm, before doing what she is there to do. By the time the sirens scream to a halt, worried paramedics assessing the situation and calling for the equipment necessary to pry open the twisted metal, she is gone and so is the essence of his parents.

He is 17 when he sees her again. His prediction of being alone in the world has been both more or less true than he could have known and he finds a place to lay his head where he can, his version of family kind people who offer him something to fill his belly and don't turn him into the authorities. He is accused of being a trouble-maker, rebellious and dangerous and he doesn't argue, holding the words closer than the leather jacket which lends to his persona, but it is these accusations which have him cruising with another young man who is less than a lover and more than an enemy and it is these accusation that leave their blood singing in such a way as to miss the sign, the guardrail, the road, the gravel, but not the tree. He is hardly conscious when she sticks her head in the window, lifting him out carelessly and tossing him down more gently than her expression suggests before reaching for his friend's soul. His calls are lost to her and she stops only to brush her hands over his eyes and when he awakens it is with the warm coldness of Death burning through his veins. 

It is easy then to strike out on his own, what need does he have of schooling and friends and a plodding existence? He has a mission now and he pursues it with a single minded intent that leaves no time for questions of morals and values - if it had he would have considered the wisdom of pursuing a being older than Time, if he had he would consider what would have become of him in a different life, if he had - but he didn't. He tries to find her as a paramedic but he is always too late, as a hospital assistant but he isn't allowed close to the area, in the military but he doesn't follow orders, and when he slugs a man in the stomach outside of a pub on the far side of the wrong tracks he doesn't stop to consider not finishing the job. She doesn't look thrilled to see him, but she doesn't seem angry either and he takes it as the win it is. His mission has a new look and he embraces it eagerly.

At first he picks a fight with anyone he can find, but the first time she speaks it is to admonish him for almost being the soul she was there for (he doesn't think he'd mind, but she does and therefore he does) and he is more careful after that, choosing battles he can finish. He isn't picky about why until she glares at him for the reaping of a soul over mixing a drink the wrong way and he realizes that she is more moral than he and this idea (so scorned by the Church and those that dare to speak for it) is something he's never considered but swiftly adopts as his own. He is soon spoken of in hushed tones by those he helps - the beaten wives, the abused children, the kicked homeless, and cursed by those who want the city protected by men in uniforms not by one man in leather - but his crusade is his own and he cares because she has taught him that he must. 

He doesn't know how it will end only how he hopes it will and after awhile he realizes she doesn't know either. Sometimes she stays and talks, sometimes she just looks at him with eyes weighed with the grief of Time, sometimes she reaches out a hand and brushes his skin, reigniting the cold fire within him. He wants to argue but she doesn't start it, wants to plead but she doesn't pause, wants to bargain but she offers him nothing in return - nothing except everything, but she doesn't see it that way and his words don't seem to move her. Occasionally he grows reckless, deliberately provoking those that could ground him to dust without blinking, but he has been fighting too long and he is quicker than he realizes, even when he wants to relax his muscle memory won't allow for that sort of thing (the weight of her disapproval quickens his reflexes and he curses himself because she is already cursed). 

It ends because it must. It ends because she is immortal and he is not. It ends because he has lived more decades upon the earth than his eleven year old self recognized that a person could. It ends because he loses a battle, not one that he fought on the behalf of someone else, but one that raged through his own system, tearing him apart from the inside and mocking his fighting skills with every advance, parry, and charge. It ends because he realizes that he can finally close his eyes and she will be there waiting when he opens them and so he does.

(When she holds out her hand he takes it with one that burns at the same degree as hers and this time neither one of them let go.)


End file.
